Reports indicate misconduct by an activist climate scientist (see below). We consider this case a very exciting demonstration of the situation the issue and science of climate finds itself in, and invite readers for discussion, also how this case compares with ClimateGate.

Background information:

The Heartland Institute had contacted us with this letter (as of 20 February 2012):

Dear Dr. von Storch:
It has come to our attention that your blog or web site has taken one or more of the following actions:
- Posted links to a document titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.”
- Posted links to certain other documents purporting to be those of The Heartland Institute.
- Posted blogs or web pages discussing any or all of these documents.

Please be advised that the Confidential Memo is fake. It was not written by anyone associated with Heartland. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact. Publication of this falsified document, or blogs or web pages about it, is improper and unlawful.

As to other documents purported to be authored by Heartland, we are investigating how they came to be published and whether they are authentic or have been altered or fabricated. Several of the documents say on their face that they are confidential documents and all of them were taken from Heartland by improper and fraudulent means. Publication or republication of any and all confidential or altered documents is improper and unlawful.

Furthermore, Heartland views the malicious and fraudulent manner in which the documents were obtained and/or thereafter disseminated, as well as the repeated blogs or web site posts about them, as providing the basis for civil actions against those who obtained and/or disseminated them and wrote about them. Heartland fully intends to pursue all possible actionable civil remedies to the fullest extent of the law.

Therefore, we respectfully demand: (1) that you remove links to these documents from your blog or web site; (2) that you remove all posts that refer or relate in any manner to these documents or quotes from them; (3) that you publish retractions of prior postings; and (4) that you remove all such documents from your server, if you have placed them there.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you require any further information.

We have closed the original thread and are willing to remove comments of readers, which may constitute "falsche Tatsachenaussagen", but not "Meinungsäusserungen". (For the background of this, refer to the verdict in the Rahmstorf-Meichsner case.) We would appreciate if somebody with a better legal understanding would volunteer in supporting us in case of complications. (It is non the first case that we are confronted with legal demands.)

As to other documents purported to be authored by Heartland, we are investigating how they came to be published and whether they are authentic or have been altered or fabricated.Und nach 7 Tagen liegt immer noch kein Ergebnis vor ;-)

Some years ago you could hear them saying "we may have the best science in the world but seem to be losing the PR war"

It looks as if they did not improve since then. Instead of engaging mass audiences in a meaningful way they have given grist to the mill of their adversaries. Both in the CRU and Heartland hacks it is the climate activists who are losing public credibility.Still, there are some who think Gleick is a hero:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?newsfeed=true

It is unbelievable. To illegally (?) obtain documents through impersonation, and to have something to do, whether as author or disseminator, of an apparently fake document (it seems unlikely Heartland have misled on the fake), a document, it's an own goal of striking stupidity and incompetence, and I'm afraid he deserves what he gets.

Heartland come out of it fine - they're a strident lobbying organisation, sure, who do exactly what it says on the tin, and that's been confirmed by the genuine released documents (which even confirmed that they are not Big Oil let alone Koch-funded).

Yes, there's some irony. Although roles have switched, it's again science losing the "PR war".

You might be surprised, but I think, the longterm consequences of climategate include some positive effects, kind of "reinigendes Gewitter". It will be interesting to observe, if heartlandgate will have an carthatic effect, which camp in climate wars will be able for self criticism?

Personally for me there's sth new: a feeling of being ashamed, acompanied at the same time by some compassion with Peter Gleick.

"Both in the CRU and Heartland hacks it is the climate activists who are losing public credibility."

Are you always concluding from one member of a group or population on the rest of the group or population? Or is it just a problem with plural and singular on your spell checker? Just asking.

PS By the way, there is this famous australian oceanographer who killed his wife and dissolved her body in their home's bathtub. He continued publication even in prison. What are your conclusions regarding climate scientists?

@rest

Someone understood how Gleick got these documents? I dont understand. I mean did he physically break into the offices of the Heartland institute?

confused

@roddy

What does that mean "through impersonation"? How did he get them?

@Hans At the beginning I was not very interested in that. I mean, is there someone surprised by how these guys work, get funding etc etc? But now with this obvious thread I think they are overdoing it a little bit.Links, texts, whatever soon on my website.

Heartland: "... that you remove links to these documents from your blog or web site"

I have not the slightest intention of giving you advice but I don't think your legal notice ("Haftungshinweis") does enough for what should be done without delay.The desmoblog link has to be removed.Even more so when you state that "the analysis of the text supports the understanding that the document would not be authentic".Regardless of legal considerations there are other good reasons to remove the link.

@ AndreasWe all know that Heartland is a conservative think tank, a political and a private project.

It can't be compared to scientific bodies like the CRU which are funded with public money.

You are deliberately ignoring the damage done for climate science when a man like Gleick, lecturing on integrity and scientific ethics, leaves his reputation in ruins.

Whatever you refer to, you should not try to make Gleick's behaviour acceptable, spreading new suspicions. No way.

Andy Revkin (NYT) got it right: "The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the “rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed."

"The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address."

Hans, you ask for a discussion of similarities/distinctions with climategate - the following spring to mind:

1 We still don't know who released the CRU emails, nor how they were obtained. We do know how Gleick obtained the HI documents, by impersonation.

2 The CRU emails were true/valid, one of the HI docs is fake. We presume faked by an anti-HI person, whether Gleick or another. (The double-bluff argument is surely not credible.)

3 The CRU emails revealed (to us non-scientists) something of how this group of scientists behaved, with respect to peer-review and the IPCC. Having said that, it wasn't earth-shattering.

4 The HI docs (ex the fake one) reveal nothing surprising at all, except that HI do exactly what they say they do, no more no less. Their 'political' stance is explained fully on their web-site. Their 'anti-alarmist' and free-market stance is well-known.

5 Gleick's individual behaviour is extra-ordinary, breaking the law as he did with what can only be a means-justify-ends mentality. Petulant email deletion aside, there is nothing like that in climategate.

6 The accusations against IPCC scientists over climategate were against a team, a group. This is one man losing his cool, no generalisations are possible.

7 I would like to think some good came of climategate, in terms of the 'system' working strictly better afterwards. Not much good can come of Gleick-gate.

On another subject there is a fascinating post on Bishop Hill exploring a paper published by Grantham Institute (LSE) people (Sharman and Homes 2010) on how EU biofuel legislation was introduced. See http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/20/the-entrepreneur.html

Anonymous informed me that the address of the link to the disputed document is still in our thread. That is intentional. We are not responsible for what others write. We made clear that we do not support or endorse the claims made in that document. We also made clear that the document is contested and that Heartland labels it as a "fake".

However, it is a document of general public interest. For me it is now less a document about Heartland but about the adversaries of Heartland.

Georg, you asked "By the way, there is this famous australian oceanographer who killed his wife and dissolved her body in their home's bathtub. He continued publication even in prison. What are your conclusions regarding climate scientists?". I am not sure what you are after. Maybe that a person, who murders his wife, can still generate scientific knowledge (i.e, be a scientist)? True, he can. But maybe he would not be considered a trustful partner in a future marriage?

However, if he did not only murder his wife, but also produced a scam with data for arriving at certain conclusions about some oceanographic phenomenon - that would disqualify him as a scientist, in my opinion.

But with Gleick, if we understand the story correctly, we have a case of a scientist, who with his childish manipulations is squandering the authority of science - unfortunately this authority is the capital we all live from, you and me and the others. This capital should be preserved, better even - extended.

That we have severe negative repercussions of the reputation of science in this case and in case of ClimateGate is not because of a failure of setting up an insufficient PR-scheme, but due to the failure to understand the underlying social dynamics, of which Gleick, you and me are part of. Heartland has the right to do what it does (within the limits of the law), and Gleick have the right of not liking it (within the limits of the law). I guess eventually a US court will determine, if both, or even none of the two, remained within the limits of the law.

"But with Gleick, if we understand the story correctly, we have a case of a scientist, who with his childish manipulations is squandering the authority of science..."

Is the authority of science really dependent on the behavior of each and every of the millions of scientists? Does each and every cheater endanger the institution of marriage? This doesn't make sense to me.

I think this is not the problem. The problem is the fight between alarmist and skeptical scientists, which indeed causes neurotic behavior. Not the authority of science is in danger, but the mental health of some scientists. This is a serious problem, too.

"The reaction from climate scientists and the climate activist community will be closely watched and either further cement the partisanship or help repair it."

As far as I am concerned, this is definitely true. I am not even a WG1 "skeptic", but further developements will surely have some influence on which person or organization to trust on matters I don´t have the time and/or means to check myself.

"Not the authority of science is in danger, but the mental health of some scientists. This is a serious problem, too."

I beg to differ. When important proponents of science and/or a specific scientific position go wild, this will harm the credidibilty of their position as well as, although to a lesser extent, science in general. Speaking in Hoffmann´s terms, this is not just about silencing your wife for good, but terminally silencing her for disagreeing with your research.

Just a possibly stupid question: my employer offers coaching for managers appearing to be challenged psycho-socially, but who are still considered valuable because of other skills.

Are there comparable services at research institutions?

Had Gleick had some supervision after the Amazon/Laframboise and the Tamsin Edwards incidents, he could have spared himself a lot of trouble, I guess.

Maybe the IPCC should install a psych unit with the authority to send those on the brink to some tropical island for a week or two - under supervision. Doing calculations about how likely it is the wave that destroyed your sandcastle was due to AGW, are strictly forbidden.

"When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths--including lying--to advance their worldview, I'd say one of the movement's top priorities should be not proving them right. And if one rogue member of the community does something crazy that provides such proof, I'd say it is crucial that the other members of the community say 'Oh, how horrible, this is so far beyond the pale that I cannot imagine how this ever could have happened!' and not, 'Well, he's apologized and I really think it's pretty crude and opportunistic to make a fuss about something that's so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.' "After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you've lost the power to convince them of anything else."

Joe Romm has a comment up on Climate Progress. He shoots a broadside against Andy Revkin who is the real villain for him (and behind Revkin, Roger Pielke Jr).

"Last night I, and I imagine everyone else, was stunned to learned that Dr. Peter Gleick was the one who put these documents into the public domain. In a Huffington Post piece, he acknowledged “a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics,” an assessment I would not disagree with. He then apologized for his mistakes, a move that distinguishes him from Heartland or his critics in the media, like Andrew Revkin, whose too-rapid response to these events certainly crossed the line. ...

But Revkin has never retracted his attack or apologized. And he keeps quoting Pielke (as does the NY Times), even though Pielke’s statements on climate scientists inspire objections from scientists like Ken Caldeira...

What Gleick did was wrong and Gleick not only knows it, he admitted it and apologized, thereby preserving his reputation in a world where everyone makes mistakes, but few admit it.All of us wait for the same from Heartland and Revkin."

If Romm-style reactions become the norm in the climate science community it will only undermine itself further.

Yesterday Judith Curry speculated that "Joe Romm, at least so far, has ignored the whole issue. Which strategically is not a bad move."

I would not agree that the issue is the mental health of an individual scientist. Please note the reaction of the overwhelming majority of scientists to the case - nothing, if any then defending Gleick. (As an additional measure I have such reactions in my facebook-friends milieu, with quite a few active scientists.)

Also, one should keep in mind that Peter Gleick is a prominent scientist, part of a large network, even a member of the US Academy of Science (as far as I know).

The party is paid for by all climate scientists, including Georg and me. However, the case is interesting and intriguing, worth an analysis by our cultural science colleagues :-)

On the other hand - maybe the story has not yet come to an end. I would not be surprised if other unexpected developments will show up in the coming weeks (no misunderstanding: I have no information about any such development, my statement is based on general expectations.)

V. Lenzer- please stop your aggressive rhetoric. I have deleted your "vulgar" comment. I will delete any other comment of yours if you decide to continue your practice of shouting at others; if you want to take part in the debate, then behave. -- Hans von Storch

I do also agree that the HL docs were kind of unsurprising. Who did believe that Watts and Singer told the truth in saying that they receive no funding from lobby groups? Unfortunately the whole discussion now focuses on Gleick, who sacrificed his reputation in order to expose the machinery of US climate denial.

Christian #35I do not think that Gleick sacrified himself - your wording sounds heroic, but it was merely stupid behaviour and demonstrating that the difference between deniers and alarmists in their approach is not that different. Gleick was caught; I do not believe that he intended to come out openly with his misleading move. If he would have been a hero, he would have published the material right from the beginning openly: "I do this NOW."

On top of it, he is not only damaging himself, but the whole community, among them: me. I do not like that.

There was the case of William Connolley, co-founder and member of the staff of Realclimate, re-writing more than 5'000 Wikipedia articles on global warming, erasing the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, defending the hockey stick graph etc.

There are Climategate I and II, exposing the misconduct of prominent scientists, manipulating data, suppressing opponents and taking influence on the review processes in the major scientific reviews.

This is all well known. Nobody ever doubted the authenticity of the leaked documents from scientific institutions funded with public money. There is not even one faked document published by FOIA.

A large number of NGOs is supporting the claim of a dangerous man made global warming, some of them funded with tax money, all of them sponsored by all kind of donators, private and industrial sources. Al Gore for instance was able to launch a 300 Mio campaign.

On the other hand there is Heartland a right wing think tank fighting in this PR battle with its arguments against the cause and funded with about 3 or 4 Mio $ in its climate division (no big oil money involved as being insinuated. The Koch money went to the Heartland’s health care program).

You don't have either to support or to hate the Heartland Institute for what it is representing. They are just legally doing what all their opponents on the other side of the debate do: PR.

Thus, comparing climategate with the leaked Heartland documents can hardly be done seriously. Neither do people like Gleick or Connolley deserve some kind of a hero status or the glory of whistleblowers. Far from that: they are just damaging their cause - and the integrity and the public image of science.

As Megan McArdle puts in the Atlantic: "Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it's no good to say that people shouldn't be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?"

V. Lenzer #38 - I would like to hear more about this assertion "There was the case of William Connolley, co-founder and member of the staff of Realclimate, re-writing more than 5'000 Wikipedia articles on global warming, erasing the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, defending the hockey stick graph etc.". This case is new to me.

The issue is demonstrably not the mental health of one scientist, I agree with HvS fully.

While Gleick may have flipped in doing what he did, that someone in his position, with his titles, his awards, head of AGU ethics, on the committe preparing schooling materials, giving Congressional testimony, etc etc, could do what he did is just a shocker. (If he had anything to do with the fake document, whether authoring or distributing knowingly, it just gets worse.)

And, like it or not, it makes one wonder what else there is out there.

Megan McA has put it all very well in her Atlantic post, other have quoted excerpts above.

HI, like them or loathe them, seem to do exactly what they say they do, legally.

If 'the cause' can justify treating them as such a Satan that they deserve burgling, and if a perfectly legal and pretty small lobbying organisation can drive respectable commenters, including scientists in the field, so crazy that they support Gleick's actions, then there is something wrong with those people.

If sceptic 'activists' decided to phish/pretext (even fake) documents from Greenpeace in order to disclose their workings and motives and fund-raising and lobbying techniques, would these same people really say 'I would agree with those actions if I disapproved of Greenpeace's behaviour'? That's crazy.

@Hans"(Gleick) who with his childish manipulations is squandering the authority of science - unfortunately this authority is the capital we all live from, you and me and the others. "

Hans, I think I start to know where the problem is.

Scientists do a lot of things, some of these things they do statistically even more than other people. They manipulate, exploit postdocs, bore to death undergraduates, are alcoholic, dont wash themselfs regularly, cheat on their wifes, are childish (I am not referring to Gleick but to more or less any normal science meeting) and sometimes even furt in the elevator. All of this behavior can be more or less rightfully be associated to scientist. People do not have confidence into scientists because they are nice, correct, good smelling persons. Not even since they are absolutely convinced that scientists never manipulated the data and arguments they are producing. They trust in Science because the fridge works, the iPhone plays music and the doctor get them stop coughing.

So here is the problem: Your idea of a scientist is protestant, even puritanist. Only a pure person can deliver the message. You are copying the role model of a priest straight to the science and and the scientists. I dont think that this is necessary and it has some issues with democracy.

I am catholic. You can do a lot of sins and still two Ave Maria will fix it.

Back to Gleick (never heard of him before). I have not the slightest problem with what he did. I wouldnt have done it and probably the HI is not really worth the effort. He obviously tried to get even with these guys and nearly succeeded. What is the big deal? He tried to make fun of the HI and kind of messed it up at the end. Still the dump in this spectacle is clearly the Heartland: Someone sends you a fake mail and you send him all the stuff that you consider afterwards as so important that you try to silence half of the planet to even speak about? What comlete morons!

I'd be surprised if HvS suspected the science of a man seen at a conference with a lady clearly not his wife.

A private, albeit lobbyist, organisation objects to being burgled and having their private documents and lists of donors published, and to being defamed by a fake document - that makes THEM morons?

Gleick seems to have believed that the cause of hurting Heartland over-rode anything - and other scientists have come out in support of that view?

What else would they do to get their views across?

And you can't see how that makes HvS sad, that he worries that people like me will wonder what motivates scientists pressing for policy?

Of course scientists are motivated by career, money, publications, fame and so on, and of course this can bias their behaviour, as well as their frequent farting and even adultery.

But that's simply not the issue here. And the issue isn't this one individual. It's the apologists saying that it's fine to break the law in the right cause, the cause being climate policy, especially if the other party are libertarian republicans. Which absolutely causes people like me to wonder what else they might do or say.

Sorry, I did not express myself correctly; the mental health argument was intended not in a personal, but in a more general way: there is something neurotic or pathological about the conflict alarmist versus skeptic.

For example, both sides pretend that the fight is about humanity's future and the integrity of science. This is neurotic, because it's not the case and it is not consistent with reality. Neither climate politics nor the integrity of science depend on the outcome of this fight (which will never have an end, by the way. Until people or combatants lose interest. They ARE this fight, day and night).

That's the error both sides share: that truth can be discovered independently from any societal, economic or political constellations, and that this "truth" will decide our destiny. It's simply not like that.

(What we have, is the IPCC, consensus in many questions, belief in others, and lots of uncertainty. That's what we deal with. Climate science is post-normal science, some folks call it).

The problem is that both sides don't listen. They completely agree that their fight is the most important in the world. They agree that (their) truth will decide the fight, and this will save the whatever...(and, of course, they agree that post-normal is postmodern fake etc).

"There was the case of William Connolley, co-founder and member of the staff of Realclimate, re-writing more than 5'000 Wikipedia articles on global warming, erasing the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, defending the hockey stick graph etc".

This claim is based on an article by Lawrence Solomon that I think exaggerates the case against William Connolley's abuse of Wikipedia. I think the article is wrong to focus too much on the Little Ice and Mediaeval Warm Period. It is true, I think, that William Connolley has contributed to more than 5,000 articles in Wikipedia. It is true that he completely rewrote some if not many of them. It is true that he excised a lot of material he disagreed with and grossly distorted Wikipedia to an alarmist bias. It is true that he treated Wikipedia's processes and other editors with contempt.

In reality, and I think without doubt, the worst part of Connolley's reign of terror (before he was topic banned and put on a good leash) was his efforts to defame skeptics in their Wikipedia biography pages, often in knowing violation of Wikipedia's rules. He is still banned from writing about living people, which shows that the community still remembers what he got away with for so long.

And yes, he did all this while he was an active member of RealClimate, and presumably with their blessing. There is evidence of coordination with Mike Mann behind the scenes in some of the Climategate emails, for instance.

@RoddyIf this is burglary in the US a judge might decide. In Spain the level of how criminal an act is (or criminal at all) is considered proportional to the number of obstacles the criminal had to overcome to commit the crime. Basically you cant "steal" something which just lays on the street. If you just have to open an unclosed door then its "hurto" if you break the door, then its "robo". If Gleick really didnt make more then sending a mail saying that he is Bob X and wants the documents of the last meeting then he pretty much took the things that were just laying on the street.Just my short legal estimate.

"that he worries that people like me will wonder what motivates scientists pressing for policy?"

Scientists pressing for a certain policy are using their democratic rights. Hope you are fine with it? Or do you live in a country where the constitution excludes some professions from the democratic process?And their motivation is pretty much what the motivation of whoever tries to press some policies. If you dont like the policy just press for some other.

@Lenzer"This confidence doesn't get lost by the misbehaviour of one or some individuals - but by downplaying, feeble or trivializing reactions of some parts of the scientific commmunity."

I totally disagree. Science is a closed social system which according to their own rules produces something that is called "scientific knowledge". The society as a whole appreciates the work of this system because their products work, that is weather forcasts, nuclear reactors, chess computers and viagra, and nobody cares about who is correctly condemning whatever bad behaviour has to be condemned.

I have not the slightest problem with what he did. I wouldnt have done it and probably the HI is not really worth the effort. He obviously tried to get even with these guys and nearly succeeded. What is the big deal

You miss the problem, Georg. In the moment, Gleick made his illegal trick, he never had a chance to succeed. He only had a chance for a short moment of success, but an the longscale he was doomed.

And I agree with HvS, it's going to be a problem for all climate scientists.

PS:Gleick was one of the main contributors for climate etc. issues in HuffPost and Forbes. You see the problem?

Thanks, V. Lenzer #43 and Alex Harvey #46, for your explanation of the "William Connolley-affair". I had never heard anything of that sort - but had noticed that the entry on me on Wikipedia was repeatedly changed, which I thought was an unfair description. In particular with respect to the hockeystick affair.

Please do not be offended that I am still skeptical. I would like to hear what the "other side" as to say. Maybe Georg - you seem to have a rather liberal view of what constitutes acceptable behavior and what not. What about the others, such as Bam and Rob Dekker - have you heard about these assertions about William Connolley and RealClimate?

Where do people know from that MC modified more than 5000 entries?

Greetings to E. Lindemann :-)

---------------------

Georg - I do not think that two Ave Maria's make the public forget easily. Even the deeds of Catholic priests dealing with little boys in a very catholic country like Ireland was not forgotten, even though certainly many Ave Maria's were used for mitigation. Also, you may have noticed that culture matters in such such cases.

"Also, you may have noticed that culture matters in such such cases."Of course. I just found out the underlying cultural background of you and me. I am fine with good science and two Ave Maria, but you want good science AND good smelling scientists. That is asking too much of human beings (such as the protestant church asks too much).

Concerning the alleged wikipedia affair by William Conolley (who actually is a very nice guy I know from a common project).

a) Since years he is no longer member of realclimate. I dont think he wrote more than 3 posts there.

b) For many years he was the climate guru at wiki (they have this strange hierarchy names at wiki, like in the army. He was on top of this hierachy for climate) so I guess yes he edited a lot of texts and the generally excellent texts are partly due to him. If yourown entrance in Wiki is bad probably you could do something about it.

c) He is no longer in science but still bloggs on climate. You can contact him for example here:http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/

d) I cant say anything to these accusations (though by experience ...). Here are a number of texts he wrote on the subject.http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/wikipedia/

GeorgI think you confuse science and technology. A working piece of technology is not "true" and not made "by science" but by engineers. They may or may not use scientific principles.Conversely, science does not "work" like technology does. It produces knowledge as you rightly say. You may even regard it as a social system but this is not operating in isolation from other systems. Public credibility and trust are important.

Georg #53.So you would confirm two points - Connnolly was a member of RealClimate and he did edit many entries in Wikipedia on climate and climate change - correct?

And: A caretaker, who rapes little boys in his custody, can be a good priest or cardinal, as long as a few Ave Maria's are applied. Somebody, who fabricated data, can still be a good scientist, as long as he apologizes.

You seem to have a very pessimistic view of both, your fellow catholics and your fellow scientists.

But I explained (or tried to) WHY people have confidence in Science. It's because they see (I think rightly so) technology as THE PRODUCT of science. Nobody trusts science and/or scientists because there is some convergence in the scientific opinion that dark matter explains about 30% of the total mass in the universe but because the little GPS thing shows them the way to Grossburgwedel.

HvS: 'Georg - you seem to have a rather liberal view of what constitutes acceptable behavior and what not.' - yup, better and more pithily put than I could have done.

Impersonating a director of Heartland in order to obtain their property from them is ok? So if I impersonate your builder and you send me money intended for him, that's ok too I guess! :) You pretty much left it 'lying in the street'.

Of course I'm ok with people advocating policy being motivated by something, whether they believe in that policy for the good of mankind, some constituency thereof, possibly just their good.

But I would like to believe they will advocate reasonably fairly, and if I catch them promoting (or even authoring, who knows) fake documents to smear their opponents, and stealing, and also see others standing up for their behaviour, I begin to look at them differently. I also expect their colleagues in arguing the same policy not to support their behaviour.

HvS's point is that Gleick is a respected, decorated, titled, chair of ethics, climate scientist, and that other climate scientists have stood up for his actions. And that this diminishes climate scientists' capital, in terms of the likelihood of them being trusted or believed.

I don't see that as being so complicated.

And none of this has anything to do with how they are as human beings, necessarily imperfect. We all sin, we all smell.

Indeed, if Gleick had NOT been supported by others it would matter far less, it would be one man who ran amok who should see a shrink because he lost all sense of proportion.

"Scientific integrity isn't about having the right goals. It's about using the right methods, which is why research is policed so rigorously, and why even the hint of cheating can ruin a career. Scientists aren't perfect, and there is enormous temptation to bend the rules and massage results — which happens more often than the scientific community would like to admit. But science works because the importance of those rules is drilled into students from the moment they first step into a lab. It's why the public still trusts scientists far more than any other public figures. It's how we know what's real and what's not."

Science is also not about having the right or the good answers. We know that even our best answers are most of the time only almost "right", whatever "right" may mean. The normative quality "good", on the other hand, is a moving target. The authority comes from the methods, not from the intentions.

This is science telling us what might happen. What the chances of bird flu epidemics are, how many people might catch hiv, how rainfall might change in Africa, whether BSE is a danger to humans and to what extent.

So trust and credibility are rather important, these are not falsifiable predictions, and scientists of this type inform public policy. Unlike your satnav.

I have limited experience with Connolley at wikipedia. Shortly after Bray and von Storch came out, I attempted to add it to the wikipedia article on the AGW consensus. It moves around, but roughly here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Surveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literaturePeople kept erasing the link, saying that your previous survey was known to be biased. I replied that this one was better. I didn't get very far. Eventually, Connolley said to add it, since the results were acceptable, and that was that. Later, a couple of other surveys were added, and I tried to add comments that I thought were fair limitations on the results. It was impossible; each survey got a short quote that supported that consensus and no other details were allowed. Essentially, someone who reads the page will not know a thing about the existence of contrary opinions. I know that most scientists agree with AGW, but it was just too much, and there was nothing I could do; changes disappeared immediately.

Weather forecasts, nuclear reactors, chess computers, viagra and navigation devices are in general not results of science, but of engineering. The engineering method differs from the scientific method in many ways.

While scientists try to explain processes in nature by basic principles and models, engineers try to use such processes - even without any explanation or without any understanding of the "why" and "how". The engineering method is about conrolling and amplifying what nature shows in an observation.

In most cases I can think of, not science but engineering led to innovations. Often scientists became aware of a new phenomenon not before a technical system using it catched their interest.

So the case of Gleick ist about damaging public trust in science, public trust in the quality of machines and technical products of all kinds is not affected and will not help to diminish, what Gleick has done.

I had intended to stay out of this, and I am also not sure why you would like my opinion. Why not ask William Connolley himself?

A good start is here:http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/a_childs_garden_of_wikipedia_p.phpI will ask him to comment himself also, but he may not be very interested to discuss with the likes of V. Lenzer, who just repeats false claims.

Also, I think Rob Dekker will not be returning. This is at least what his last comment on this site suggested.

Bam, I was just interested what you, who had voiced strong positions before on the Zwiebel, would say to these claims on Connolly. I was wondering what others, with different views would say to these assertions - that Connolly was a founding member of Real Climate, an influential person dealing with climate issues at Wikipedia, effectively acting as a gatekeeper who looked out for more than 5,000 climate related entries.

Belette #69 - could you confirm that you are "William Connolley", please? Why do you not use your real name?

In the anonymous contribution above this claim is made: "William M. Connolley, and ZuluPapa5 are each indefinitely banned from the CCT." - is this correct?

On the entry about me, do not worry, I left it to itself - I am not used to argue with invisible powers behind curtains. Also, please be aware that I did not claim that you did something with the entry about me.

Probably not. Though in any case I wouldnt give you the money and if I did that would be incredibly dump isnt it?

"HvS's point is that Gleick is a respected, decorated, titled, chair of ethics, climate scientist, and that other climate scientists have stood up for his actions."

By the by are there some links and evidence for this. I dont know Gleick. So I would be interested in links demonstrating that he is so important and that there is such massive backing him up in the scientific community.

@Heller"Weather forecasts, nuclear reactors, chess computers, viagra and navigation devices are in general not results of science, but of engineering. The engineering method differs from the scientific method in many ways."

Might be true to some extent (so there are many semesters shared between engineers and scientists) but that's irrelevant. My statement is that people true in Science because they surrounded by the working output of Science. They rightly associate all modern technology with Science. I consider this much more important than a definition in the Times magazine of the scientific method and on correct scientific conduct.

I'd like to add some points to the (off-topic?) discussion about Connolley:

1. I'm really baffled, because supposed the allegations to be true, Connolley would have acted in a way, which is identical to Heartland PR (e.g. K-12 curriculum), but nobody has seen a problem with such Heartland strategies up to now. Seems to be rather onesided and hypocritical.

BTW: Have you heard of Heartland's own climate wiki? No?http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/06/the_heartland_institutes_faile.php

2. "Gatekeeper" at wikipedia? Some people seem to underestimate how wikipedia really works.

Georg #75: you meant "My statement is that people trust in Science because they surrounded by the working output of Science.", right? - I guess that is wishful thinking. Why did most previously trust in the dominant explanation system provided by the catholic church? Because they were surrounded by the working output of the Church? Why did many in Germany trust the knowledge claims of the Nazis? On the other hand, I would expect that some scholarly analysis has been done on the issue of the foundation of trust in science in different times and cultures. Anybody around, who could help?

"Georg - maybe we have cultural differences. If you were dumb enough to send me the money when I impersonated your builder, then it could be redefined as a hoax, rather than a theft?"

As I said, no. I just consider what Gleick did as a hoax and as you might have realized the Heartland just send him their documents on the annual budget but not the budget itself. So your analogy is of limited help. Gleicks problem is, it worked.

So that it is? The most extraordinary success of Gleick is a presentation at the Sundance film festival. And where are exactly the list of hundreds of scientists backing him up? The technology doesnt work, since I cant find them.

@77 "supposed the allegations to be true, Connolley would have acted in a way, which is identical to Heartland PR (e.g. K-12 curriculum)," Really bizarre. Someone has a problem with Heartland trying to push their beliefs? And that they feel schools are teaching wrong, and want to fix it? Well, I guess you have a problem with that, but most of us understand that everyone does that and there's nothing wrong with it.

But what does that have to do with trying to take over (a piece of) wikipedia by force, using a team of verbal thugs to allow nothing to be said except for what they believe, erasing contrary changes, and abusing other editors?

You don't see the distinction between, "We would like to add our input into what schools teach", and "We will allow nothing to be taught except our input"?

"You don't see the distinction between, "We would like to add our input into what schools teach", and "We will allow nothing to be taught except our input"?

I think, it's not so easy.Belette could write "I would like to add scientific input into Wikipedia, why should I be excluded?"

A larger part of disagreement here in the thread seems to arise from our different preconceptions biasing our attribution of facts.

Interested in my opinion?I'm relieved that WC doesn't work at Wikipedia any longer. Not because of how he handled it, I do not know any example of his work I would criticize. But as science Wikipedia is based on trust, and if there's a part of our climate regarding climate scientists at Wikipedia as a problem, let's leave them aside.

@ William/Belette

Thanks for your work! Wanna good laughter? Read this at WUWT:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/

"Belette could write 'I would like to add scientific input into Wikipedia, why should I be excluded?'" He wasn't banned for adding his input. I do that too, sometimes, and so can everyone. He was banned for silencing everyone else. I don't see why this distinction, between speaking and suppressing others' speech, is so subtle.

You stated:"There was the case of William Connolley, co-founder and member of the staff of Realclimate, re-writing more than 5'000 Wikipedia articles on global warming, erasing the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, defending the hockey stick graph etc."

You can easily check all modifications William Connolley made, and he indeed made 5000 'changes' to articles, but not 5000 related to global warming. That would be lie 1.

Second lie is that he erased the LIA and MWP. See, I'm nice and only make that one lie.

That he "defended" the hockeystick (by which I guess you mean MBH98 or MBH99) will be a matter of what you consider "defend", so I'll leave that one as not a lie, but possibly a distortion.

I think you will find that William Connolley was just one of many who were involved in writing, editing, and administrating the articles on climate change. There certaintly is and never was anything that looked like "we will allow nothing to be taught except our input". Unless you take as example the changes Connolley made to some biographies of living people, which were then removed because they were supposedly contentious or negative, etc. Is that what you meant?

Concerning William Connolley and the claim that he would be topic banned - this web-page was suggested to look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision#William_M._Connolley_topic-banned_.28R3.29.

I did so, and found this

"5.6) William M. Connolley is topic-banned from Climate change, per Remedy 3.

Support:

To replace remedies 5.1 to 5.5 above. Roger Davies talk 04:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)Shell babelfish 08:45, 26 September 2010 (UTC)It has become clear, during the case itself, that the topic area has become too personalized and polarized around a number of editors who are, frankly, incapable of working together. While I may not agree that all editors involved have the same severity of misbehavior, I can appreciate that a forcible fresh start is probably going to help — with gradual return on merit as the editors involve themselves in other areas of the project. — Coren (talk) 17:48, 2 October 2010 (UTC)Risker (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2010 (UTC)Carcharoth (talk) 07:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)Aye. - Mailer Diablo 15:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)Sad, reluctant support. I dislike intensely the idea of separating a knowledgeable editor from editing in the field of his expertise. My instincts impel me to say that I would, if possible, prefer a more carefully tailored, nuanced sanction or set of sanctions that could preserve the value of William M. Connolley's editing while addressing the problems that exist with it. (This is an observation I've made about some of the other editors who are being topic-banned as well.) We have also acknowledged that some of the specific assertions made about him previously were inaccurate or taken out of context. However, the "enough is enough" consensus of the committee is clear, and given the entire record here I can hardly say that the overall structure and outcome of the final decision is an outlandish one. Given the result, I hope that William M. Connolley can refocus his dedication to the project in other ways, while addressing the concerns that have been expressed so that he can return to this topic area in due course. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:30, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:(Placeholder. There is a pending thread on my talkpage in which I am awaiting some input from this editor.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)"

From what I understand, and that may be false, 8 "arbitrators" discussed different proposed measures, among them measures related to William Connolley. It seems a proposal was accepted with 5 (or 4) support votes (in case of no (or 1-2) abstentions). Thus the above proposal seem to have been accepted. If that decision was in any sense binding or final, I can not say.

There were other decision taken concerning WC, such asWilliam M. Connolley previously sanctioned and desysopped (whatever desysopped may mean)William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonisticWilliam M. Connolley's edits to biographies of living persons (here it says: "William M. Connolley has focused a substantial portion of his editing in the Climate change topic area on biographical articles about living persons who hold views opposed to his own with respect to the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming, in a fashion suggesting that he does not always approach such articles with an appropriately neutral and disinterested point of view.")

When "remedies" were discussed, several were rejected by a majority, only the one listed above was voted for.

As I said above, my experience is very limited. All I tried to do was add a few statistics, quoted directly from some surveys that are mentioned in the article, into an article. But I got the same impression that I have heard from others: Nothing is going to be allowed unless Connolley and his team think it fits their narrative. My statistics were in the wrong direction, so they were not allowed. Any change was immediately deleted. That's the way wikipedia works, of course, but if you get a team of people together to do that all the time you can completely skew a set of articles. Vast numbers of comments in the Talk sections of the articles were constantly complaining about it. Vast numbers of comments by Connolley and his friends were constantly sneering at them.

Of course, they think that's good, because they're right, and all those complainers are just a bunch of dumb Deniers! So there you are.

Summary: The atmosphere around climate change articles had turned into a battlefield, with edit wars, egos clashing and people trolling each other. The Arbitration Committee did what it usually does in such cases - hang the users they recognise (right or wrong) as principal troublemakers on both sides.

WMC was topic-banned for a year. The ban was appeal-able. He did appeal an year later. His topic ban has been partially lifted and limited only to articles about living persons connected to CC.

Of course it isn't. It is based on the validity of the text, and the quality of the references.

> Thanks for your work! Wanna good laughter? Read this at WUWT:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/

Yes, you're right, it is indeed risible. As I've pointed out in the comments. Next time, do your homework.

MikeR> He was banned for silencing everyone else

Oh grief, not more ignorance. If you're clueless about wikipedia, have you considered not talking about it?

Hans> Did I understand the document correctly? Belette?

You have indeed quoted the text properly. But, I'm not sure I actually understand your point. Are you suggesting that you consider the decision of the arbcomm to actually mean something, in the sense that you trust them to get it right? To have any understanding of science?

Belette #97I wanted to find out if the claims, according to which you would have been banned from CCT would be valid or not. I do not know how Wikipedia runs internally, therefore I followed the suggestion to look at this web-site. My impression is that the claim was supported by the deliberations in this committee. If (and how) the decision was implemented I can not say.

But from what I read I have certainly the impression that you did some gate-keeping, with listening to some scientists more that to others.

I guess I should add that I quite understand that Connolley and company should think that it's necessary to keep the wikipedia articles their way. Wikipedia is very important, after all, there's only one article on Medieval Warm Period or whatever, and why should some Denier idiots wreck the article their way? Better I should wreck the article my way.

One can see why wikipedia should not be trusted on controversial topics.

Mr. Connolley seems to be demonstrating here the environment I saw him creating at Wikipedia. I wish that people like him understood that the harm they do to their cause by their meanness and attitude is the biggest problem that AGW science has today. He and those like him are directly responsible for the way most of us outsiders feel about climate science - a bunch of angry sarcastic partisan warriors.

I correctly quoted the proposals supported by a majority of the Wiki arbitrators.

Their discussions and decisions can easily be found in the linked reports (see links in post N° 85).

You are calling me names?I'm not surprised.

@ Bam

"Medial Warm Period"I hope you know what you are talking about.

Wiki talk (Connolley):

" A paper by [http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/pdf/soon+baliunas.cr.2003.pdf Soon and Baliunas] disagrees with the IPCC and Mann and states that those warm and cold periods were indeed widespread climatic anomalies (amusingly enough, Soon & Baliunas don't disagree altogether with Mann because Soon & Baliunas state in their table 1 that Mann shows a widespread Little Ice Age). However, the Soon and Baliunas report itself has been extensively criticised [http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm]."

"Initial research on the MWP and LIA was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious, and it was assumed that this period was global. However, more recently this view has been questioned"

What's going on here? Are we proceeding in climate wars? First Gleick, now Conolley, who's next?If there's a lesson in the Gleick story, nobody seems to see it. Yesterday I was ashamed because of Gleick, today because of this off topic discussion at Klimazwiebel.

@ William

Sorry for my mistake. Thanks for calling me just fool, not twat ;-)I tried bring up the importance of trust in the discussion. Ok, wrong time, wrong place.

"The moderator of Saturday's jam-packed AAAS plenary discussion on science communication repeated the meme that scientists are in a "street fight". That may be true. But as I wrote last month, if climate discourse is a street fight, then we need to do more than fight back with the same dirty tactics. If you want to win a fight, you need to be able to take a punch.Is Simon Donner a tosser?

Isnt it more interesting (and at the same time boring) to see what the reaction to these somewhat esoteric concerns is?

Climategate, for example, was turned into a bureaucratic-managerial event by several boring inquiries. Now what will happen after ('retro-modern') Heartland? Will there be a prescription of 'post-normal' science? By whom? For what? Wouldnt that just push the superfluous boundary into different spaces (see BEST).

And are scientists-cum-science policy makers co-responsible for this mess by carrying what was (merely) supposed to be a description (post-normal) into a prescription (transparency, participation, extended peers etc.)? Also we need to ask what science policy can actually do for us – I assume less than many would believe.

+ I think most scientists in this forum are fine with post-normal as descriptive however shakey it is – it doesnt hurt. They just cannot stand post-normal science as prescription. Myles Allen has expressed such concern. I too cant see any salvation post-normal science may bring. What should, for example, citizen scientists do for dendroclimatology? How different are BEST's results from other reconstructions? The earth has been warming-this message comes to no surprise to those who have been walking their dogs for the last 50 years. Still, they couldnt care less about the numbers behind the comma. They want honest people "up there".

And, finally, is it arrogant to brush aside these problems in order to concentrate on, that is, to ask the big questions? This, foremost, requires a different language. Soon even the suffix -gate will lose its power to "switch on" citizens.

In his Skype interview with the Wall Street Journal, Joe Bast explains the similarity between Climategate and Fakegate:

We call it Fakegate after ‘faked document.’ We think that this event, very similar to Climategate, documented how desperate these scientists are. How they are willing to stoop to very low levels in order to advance their agenda. How they’re not really interested in debate at all, they’re interested in shutting down debate, shutting down institutions like the Heartland Institute that take a different point of view.

Noting that the Climategate scientists stonewalled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to prevent independent researchers from checking their data and methods, Joe also explains why there is no inconsistency in applauding the release of the Climategate emails and condemning Gleick’s theft of the Heartland documents:

Now it’s been pointed out that maybe we’re hypocritical to complain that documents were stolen from us and yet we quoted from the documents that were taken from the scientists, the Climategate event. I think it’s very different. The Heartland Institute is a private organization, we’re not a public organization, and we’re not subject to FOIA requests. The documents that were taken from us don’t show any scheming, any kind of dishonest transactions, any attempt to suppress debate. Just the opposite, it’s an open plan that we write about all the time, put on our Web site, put it in newsletters, to our donors, all of that information was there. The purpose of stealing our documents was very specific. It was to expose our donors and to create a fraudulent narrative about why we do what we do. That’s very different from the Climategate situation.

The archive shows that William's Wikipedia activity began on 7th February 2003:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&target=William+M.+Connolley

It is quite apparent that his only interest was in the topics related to the controversy of global warming. Anyone can see that by simply glancing at his archived contributions.

While he may not have "erased" the Little Ice Age, he certainly attempted to bring it into line with Michael Mann's views, e.g.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Ice_Age&diff=prev&oldid=1672675http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Ice_Age&diff=prev&oldid=2088509http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Ice_Age&diff=prev&oldid=3664322

By early 2004, he had begun on what he would be infamous for, the smearing of other scientists. In this diff, he excises from Roy Spencer's biography all mention of Roy's scientific awards - giving the extraordinary reason that they were "out of date":http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer_%28scientist%29&diff=prev&oldid=10514535

On 4th July 2004 he created biography pages for Craig, Keith and Sherwood Idso, apparently for the purpose of linking Greenpeace's smears from the 'Exxonsecrets' webpage:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Craig_D._Idso&diff=prev&oldid=4443677

It goes on, and it took a few years before his behaviour really degenerated. On the subject of utter degeneration, I encourage you to read the discussion page inside Lawrence Solomon's biography (it's no accident that Solomon wrote against Connolley, if you saw the extraordinary lengths Connolley went to to smear Solomon in his biography).

And nothing has changed, as far as I can tell. Just a few weeks ago I attempted to engage in discussion with William at his blog. He began by inventing a childish story that I didn't know CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere. Then, so that I couldn't respond to this nonsense, he began selectively deleting my responses. In one classic instance, he published one comment I made but then silently deleted a correction I made a few minutes later.

And unfortunately for Wikipedia, there are others in there just like him. Published scientists - some quite well known - often editing anonymously - abusing Wikipedia's processes to present a slanted view of climate change and bullying anyone who disagrees in the hope that they'll leave.

I note that V. Lenzer did not contradict me calling him out on the "5000 articles on global warming"-lie. So, V. Lenzer, do you admit that was a lie?

Second, none of the evidence provided by V. Lenzer showed Connolley erased the MWP and LIA, merely that he added well known facts. Even Alex Harvey contradicts him, although he adds spin to _his_ story, since he claims something to be Mike Mann's viewpoint, while there are many (and I dare say even most) that hold exactly the same position: there was a LIA, there was a MWP, but the latter was likely not global.

But there is more disturbing evidence of how Alex Harvey adds spin to his comments on this site:earlier he claimed there is evidence of "coordination" between Mike Mann and William Connolley in the UEA e-mails. That "evidence" amounts to one e-mail in which Mike Mann refers to a figure put up on Wikipedia by "Connelly". What kind of evidence is that?

But here comes the fun stuff: you can check the history of that file, and you'll find William Connolley did not make it, nor did he put it on Wikipedia. That was a certain user "Lumidek" on February 13. Funnily enough, Lumidek has had his share of fights with Connolley. That would require some interesting coordination: Mike Mann asks Connolley to help him defend himself, and through some interesting telepathics William Connolley gets his adversary Lumidek to add a figure.

Alex Harvey also claims Connolley created pages for the Idso'sfor the explicit purpose to refer to supposed "smears" on the exxonsecrets website. While Connolley indeed added these pages, there is no evidence provided that he did so for the explicit purpose to link to the exxonsecrets page. In fact, the link Alex Harvey provides shows quite the contrary, as Connolley only adds the exxonsecrets link in a revision to his own article. If the explicit purpose was to link to exxonsecrets, the link would have been there right away.

But let me also ask Alex Harvey to provide evidence that the exxonsecrets page contains "smears".

Harvey further claims Connolley removed a section about Awards from Roy Spencer's page. However, the link he provides shows exactly the contrary: Connolley _added_ the section on awards and papers! The "out of date" clearly refers to the fact that he put information in from a congressional testimony from 1997, a whole 7 years prior to adding this information. That is, the information is outdated.

So, how about Alex Harvey's claims about William Connolley's changes to Lawrence Solomon's entry on Wikipedia? Well, let's ask Alex Harvey to come with some evidence that he did anything in that entry which could be considered malicious in any way.

If William Connolley would be anything like Heartland or Meischner, he would sue Alex Harvey for making maliciously false claims with the clear intent to damage his reputation. But he isn't like either, so Alex Harvey can breath a sigh of relief.

It is from a different source than the others. Heartland says it is false.

That is about all that the linked Atlantic article finds out.

The article even states "Every single verifiable fact that's in the memo is found in another one of the documents, or available in a public source". Nevertheless the next reason is "the style is different." So has it been copied, or is the style different.

The article in the Atlantic sheds no light on the issue whether one document is fake.

This guy Peter Gleick has balls, I give him that. To call up the Heartland, and persuade them to send him their BoD package ? That's brave. But to include a 'memo' that points right back at him as the culprit, and gives the political media denial machine a strawman to burn, which from political point of view was political suicide.

By itself, the BoD material is pretty embarrassing for the Heartland, but nobody talks about that any more now, since all the eyes are on Gleick and the stunt he pulled.

So let this be a lesson for everyone : If you argue with an ideologist, you need to get every detail right and based on facts. I you make one mistake, you will be in their arena (ideology and lies). Gleick can testify to that (he should never, ever have released that unverified 'memo').

The political ideology denial media machine is extremely efficient in diverting attention away from the truth, and they use any mistake as a strawman or red herring to discredit you and push their ideology. You know what I mean if you ever argued with them on 'skeptic' blogs or elsewhere. These guys are professionals in PR and debate. Gleick did not stand a chance in that arena.

That, my frieds, is the PR lesson today on debate based on reason, versus debate based on ideology.

Meanwhile, the denial media machine runs at full throttle. More BS (Bad Science) by the Marshall Institure in the Wall Street Journal. Supported by hundreds of commenters creating smoke and mirrors to obfuscate any scientific fact anyone may bring up.

The main question is : How do reason and facts and science stand a chance in this political argument funded by hundreds of millions of fossil fuel dollars and the Murdock media empire ?

@Hans"Georg #75: you meant "My statement is that people trust in Science because they surrounded by the working output of Science.", right? - I guess that is wishful thinking. Why did most previously trust in the dominant explanation system provided by the catholic church? Because they were surrounded by the working output of the Church? Why did many in Germany trust the knowledge claims of the Nazis? On the other hand, I would expect that some scholarly analysis has been done on the issue of the foundation of trust in science in different times and cultures. Anybody around, who could help?"

Hans

these are question I feel not really capable to discuss in English and in a reasonably time.Just some elements

1) Yes I think religion did make working and extremely relevant knowledge claims. Actually there are people saying that these claims were at the origin of the oldest known forms of religion. I am referring to astronomical observations and the useful claims they did concerned the best moment for different agricultural activities (ie sowing, irrigation etc).

2) My claim is that modern societie's trust in science and scientists is strongly affected by the fact that people perceive their every days live as formed by modern science. A perfectly normal day of a perfectly normal person is every day in contact with the results of special and general relativity, modern genetics and biochemistry, and solid state physics. They might not entirely be able to track their everyday's tools and habits to the respective science departments but they intuitively know that there is this link. This is an important element to my opinion.

3) You say that it is very essential how scientists behave and what they do and how they behave as a scientists. Could you give me any evidence that this is what controls peoples trust into science as a system and into scientific knowledge claims?

Under the headline "Dishonesty, however tempting, is the wrong way to tackle climate sceptics" it says:

"Gleick's deception — using an e-mail address set up in someone else's name to request the documents from Heartland — is certainly in line with some of the tactics used to undermine climate science. When in November 2009 a hacker distributed thousands of e-mails stolen from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, Heartland was prominent among those who criticized not the hacker, but the scientists who wrote the messages. However, Gleick, as he has admitted, crossed an important line when he acted in such a duplicitous way. It was a foolish action for a scientist, especially one who regularly engages with the public and critics. Society rightly looks to scientists for fairness and impartiality. Dishonesty, whatever its form and motivation, is a stain on the individual and the profession. Gleick does deserve credit for coming clean — but, it must be said, he did so only after he was publicly accused on the Internet of being involved."

@107. I'm having trouble following your point. The strategy memo document is not "supposed to be false". Read the other Atlantic articles by McArdle, near that link. It is false, and anyone who reads it with a critical eye will see that. It is written by a pro-AGW person who thinks that AGW-skeptics are evil and know it, and talk that way to each other when no one else is listening. "dissuading teachers from teaching science". "undermine the IPCC report". Sure, that's the kind of thing Heartland says in their secret lair. They don't really think that they're right about the science.

The memo is false. And Steve Mosher began saying more than a week ago, before anyone connected Gleick with the theft, that Gleick's writing style matches the memo. By far the most obvious explanation for all this is that Gleick forged the memo as well, after he got the other documents, because the other documents weren't exciting enough (no good lines like "dissuading teachers..."). That's why its creation date was a few days ago. Then when he was caught, he made up this absurd story of getting it in the mail and trying to get the other documents to verify it. That's what I would do too if I got a weird unsourced document in the mail, risk my career and liberty to commit wire fraud. You just have to think about that a little to see how unlikely it is.

That's what really happened. He (a) lied to get some Heartland documents, and (b) forged a totally false document to improve his story when they weren't good enough. Not the kind of thing we want from our scientists. (b) bothers me much more than (a) - which is probably why his confession tries to avoid (b).

@108 ("So let this be a lesson for everyone : If you argue with an ideologist, you need to get every detail right and based on facts. I you make one mistake, you will be in their arena"). Let this be a lesson: If you're claiming to be a scientist, arguing with some political operatives, don't make things up. Don't try to fool us so we'll agree with you. We don't appreciate scientists making things up. For some reason, their chance of convincing us that we should trust them on their science decreases.

"How do reason and facts and science stand a chance in this political argument funded by hundreds of millions of fossil fuel dollars." Did you read the documents, or the story on them? Heartland's budget is a few million dollars total. Even less of that is for climate change issues. People like M&M did their damage on no support at all, because some scientists liked their results better than their competition. Judith Curry has been saying this for a while: The really dangerous and effective skeptics are a few amateurs who happen to be interested in the science. If you want your "reason and facts to stand a chance in the political argument", stick to reason and facts. That is the only way to win in science. Name-calling and mud-slinging leads to the kind of results Gleick is now getting.

@116 thanks, this post was overdue, as puts things into proper perspective.

1. The resources that sceptical scientists and economists have at their disposal are very small. But have a look at the side of the established science:

2. If you look at calls from big european research donors like EU FP or the German BMBF, they are littered with the 'climate change' buzzword to legitimate research expenditure. All scientists applying for and working in such projects are well aware that their funding, and thus jobs, carreers, families, are based on the 'dangerous AGW' narrative ... so hardly anyone will stand up and question it, particularly when he cannot argue climate models.

3. Not talking about national and international bureaucracies. We can longer turn our eyes away from the fact that it is the climate change industry's billions (yes, billions) that call the shots. It is a similar industry as for instance the development aid industry. There are possibly hundreds of thousands of jobs as stake, totally dependent on the DAGW narrative.

3. And it is not big oil, no longer. They have learnt since years that their business is not harmed at all by the emergence of the climate change industry. The oil price is rising, demand surges, so these two industries (big oil and big climate) nicely coexist with each other. Just look a 'Beyond Petroleum'.

Does anybody still wonder why outspoken sceptics are few, as compared to mainstream scientists? I strongly believe that humans just respond to incentives. There are strong disincentives for a scientist to publicly question even small parts of the DAGW narrative. You will be called denier, vilified, not be published, not promoted, not funded. All this does not happen to those comfortably swimming in the mainstream.

So to me it is small wonder that there is not more academic questioning of the DAGW narrative. Someone has to do it after all, but the punishment is likely to be severe.

"The strategy memo document is not "supposed to be false". Read the other Atlantic articles by McArdle, near that link. It is false, and anyone who reads it with a critical eye will see that. It is written by a pro-AGW person[...]"

First, I'm not sure, if your conclusion in the last sentence is supportet by McArdle. But more important, Gleick's confession (if true) includes a further possibility.

A Heartland insider could have written it. Maybe he described how Heartlanders really talk without public ears, maybe he sexed it up.Although not beeing an official Heartland document, the word "fake" doesn't really fit.

And last but not least, maybe it is in fact a Heartland document.

I'm not able to add some probabilities to these scenarios (although the last one seems unlikely), but it shows, that's not so easy as it seems.

"The memo is false. And Steve Mosher began saying more than a week ago, before anyone connected Gleick with the theft, that Gleick's writing style matches the memo."A good point, but really a proof? Again, there are other possibilities. Did you know, that Gleick contacted several times Heartland under his real name before "Gleick's trick"? And remember, there was Gleick's name in the memo, would Mosher have identifiey Gleick as a suspect without that?

This sentence is one of the strangest one in the memo. Is Gleick the most important player in climate debate? Why his name?It bears some logic, that possibly the Insider put it in as an appetizer for Gleick.

We can speculate more, but I'm afraid, we will never get the truth without the help of Heartland and Gleick. AFAIK Heartland hasn't sued PG so far (I checked yesterday the Heartland website). Hope they will do, but I'm not sure again.

@Reiner"It was a foolish action for a scientist, especially one who regularly engages with the public and critics."

For a scientist? What the hell I am supposed to be? Charly from "three angels for Charly", the late Buddha (the early one again appears to be too childish)? An old man in a Wim Wenders movie?

I've chosen to study physics just because my cousin did it before and I didnt know what to do else and now Nature tells me that I actually entered into a sort of Zen monastery. I want my years back, start all over again and just remain the foolish person I am.

Last week I've read the Economist on the presidential primaries. They said a couple of positive things about Mitt Romney. And then they said, ok he made some remarks about abortion, evolution and climate sciences that were just completely nuts, but this is what you have to do if you wanna be a republican candidate for presidency.

So, just repeat that with me: This guy is presenting himself for the most powerful, most public job in the world and the globe's probably best and certainly very serious political magazine, The Economist, says, ok, he just has to do the buffoon because that's how it is.

But little Peter Gleick who has choosen to work on fucking hydrology he has to walk over water, turn the other cheek whenever its possible and show the world that he belongs to a finer, more honorable, wiser part of the worlds population. He must walk over red hot stones and spend his kidneys whenever there is an occasion. Ah yes, and fairness and impartiality.

@119 You probably didn't see all of McArdle's posts. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/ Most of my points came from her: The document reads like something from the imagination of pro-AGW activist, who believes that Heartland is evil and knows it. Those of us who know that we skeptics may be very stupid, but we're honestly stupid, we know the document isn't real. No, we don't talk like that. No one can believe the document unless they share Peter Gleick's dark view of skeptics. That's why so many pro-AGW blogs are busy claiming that it is all accurate: After all, we all really know that they're are out to stop teachers from teaching science, right? That phrase was posted all over the internet that day: HA! Vindicated! They really are like that!

As to Mosher, I do not think that the tiny mention of Gleick would have been enough by itself. Nor do I see why he would have confessed to (a) except that he was being accused of (b). The entire point of his (unbelievable) story is to explain why in the world he would have scanned the strategy memo into pdf a few days ago.

But yes, let's ask him for the physical memo. Anyone want to bet whether he still has it? Can anything think of a good explanation as to why he had to dispose of it?

Are you going to count all of WMC's interventions in the Wiki climate discussions? before and behind the curtains? OK, Solomon wrote about 5'000 articles in Wikipedia altogether. A number which can easily be found in the article I have linked. Do you suppose that a main part of these arcticles has been written on completely different fields? law? art & culture? chinese philosophy?

What would the exact number change on the fact that WMC has been banned from certain issues?

There must have been good reasons if you follow the discussions and the different arbitration proposals.

What's really interesting and what can be seen yet is the obvious co-operation between the members of the "team" and some of the Wiki contributors.The Soon and Baliunas paper for instance found a warm and ready welcome.

The rest of your post as for my part is opinion talk. You still seem to have a problem with the existence of a worldwide MWP, asserting that "there was a LIA, there was a MWP, but the latter was likely not global".

Folks, may I ask for a rule of expression: use the words "liar, to lie, lügen, Lügner" only when you want to imply that the person is knowingly and intentionally expressing something objectively wrong. Please be aware that this rule requires a rather deep insight, not only about what is objectively wrong but also what the person, you are talking about, intends to do. In general you will not be able to do so.

I guess Dr. Klöben and Herr Müller-Lüdenscheidt would suffice to say that something said by their opponent would be inaccurate or incorrect. These words spell out what you want to say, and people will not consider it an insult (in most cases). And insults, we should try to avoid, otherwise there is no joint sitting in the bath tub (sorry for the non-Germany, Dr. K and Herr M-L. find themselves unexpectedly in the same bath tub. A wonderful, very popular and for most Germans very funny sketch by Loriot.)

The Nature article I linked above creates a false symmetry between climategate and Gleick's trick. With climategate we do not know if the data was stolen or obtained without breaking the law. Nature should know this.

It is not easy to find the right assessment for a journal which had "urged researchers to acknowledge that they are involved in a street fight over the communication of climate science." As the editorial asks "So would it now be hypocritical to condemn Peter Gleick for fighting dirty?"

Street fight is certainly a dangerous metaphor to begin with. There are no clear rules and violence is part of the game (Molotov cocktails, tear gas, rubber bullets...). So Nature needed to do some damage limitation lest it be seen enticing Gleick into his trickery or condoning it.

Stephen Schneider had a much better metaphor, climate science as a contact sport. Boxing, rugby, football all have clear rules, the competition is normally civil, but it can hurt at times.

I have have a rather technical request: In my last statement, I made a positive remark on what was post #116 by the time. Now I see that a different post carries the #116 (has HvS deleted posts containing mudslinging?). Hm, that makes it difficult to reference to another post, if its number changes.

Georgyou say"I've chosen to study physics just because my cousin did it before and I didnt know what to do else and now Nature tells me that I actually entered into a sort of Zen monastery."

I think you miss an important point in the sentence you quote which is "especially one who regularly engages with the public and critics."

Part of that job was to appear Zen like if you wish. It included to say that you fight big lobbies and powerful forces only with peer reviewed science. Only the truth will win against evil, etc.

Another part was Gleick's standing in the science community and society. He was part of Pantheon so to speak, being a member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (this is worth $500,000 over 5 years).

Lower ranked scientists may get away with misdemeanours -- so I am not sure what would have happened if you had hoaxed the HI (you would probably not be considered for higher rewards and prizes). But then Gleick did not intend this to be a hoax. It was dead serious.

One problem starts with the claim "written". Many things he has done were removing stubs like "Naomi Orestes" (her name is Oreskes) and "Gorge Bush" (guess what is wrong with that. The 5000 number is the number of "edits", which ranges from adding a picture, correcting spelling errors, to indeed writing a whole article. But note that all changes in that article made by the same person at a later time are counted as additional edits. The number 5000 is deliberately used to inflate his supposed influence.

Moreover, the fact that Connolley is still topic banned from changing the biography of living persons is not what you started complaining about. The "good reasons" are, clearly, Connolley being not very politically correct when reacting to others, and because of ongoing edit wars on Wikipedia. You will find a lot of people banned, some permanently, for "edit wars".

Your claim that the Soon & Baliunas paper found "a warm and ready welcome" due to cooperation between members of the "team" and some of the Wiki contributors is unsupported by any evidence. So, go ahead, provide that evidence. Let's see if it is as good as Alex Harvey's evidence.

Finally, you claimed that Connolley had erased the LIA and MWP, and provided absolutely zero evidence for that. The very worst Connolley did was to refer what the IPCC report says. Gasp! Referring to a scientific review of the literature, it should be forbidden that an encyclopedia does so!

Simon Donner has an alternative approach of how to react as a scientist in a street fight, see the quote in #103. Full length text in his blog Maribor. True christian virtue, quite different than beating back and 2 Ave Maria.

"With climategate we do not know if the data was stolen or obtained without breaking the law."That's what I often read in skeptic blogs, where a "whistle blower" seems to be a fact (of course without providing evidence) , but I fail to understand. Wikileaks had hard consequences for the source of the leak in the US. In Germany it would be a crime, too. Does in GB exist a special law protecting whistle blowers? If yes, is protection warranted if somebody publishes private mails?

Does Heartland really claim the strategy paper being faked? The following article scrutinizes the Heartland press release and raises some interesting questions:http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/02/22/heartland-memo-origin-questions/

@Andreas (133), instead of going through that kind of tortuous parsing, focused on finding what you want to see, why not read the simple and clear statements Heartland has made from the first?http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/20/statement-heartland-institute-peter-gleick-confessionThey consistently have called the memo "forged" and "faked", and suggested that Gleick forged it. And again, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to, but perhaps I am closer to the mindset of skeptics than you are. The document cannot be genuine, because it sounds like it's written by someone who is not a skeptic. Pro-AGW people perhaps cannot see that, because the wrong parts don't grate on them as much. Imagine a pro-abortion organization like Planned Parenthood in America, writing a memo that uses the phrase "anti-life" instead of "pro-choice". Or vice versa for a pro-life group, calling themselves anti-choice. Can't happen.

Georg, it is not a secret that the yard stick by which society measures the integrity of individuals or groups is not uniform. Clinton still enjoys considerable respect and trust by many people in the world. If the Pope had done the same as Clinton did in the Oval Office, I am pretty sure that that Pope would not enjoy any respect at all, I do not know the reason why this occurs, but I guess that it depends on the expectations that society has on you. In the case of scientists, society expects them to be un-biased, tell the truth, work hard, etc, etc. The expectation that society places on a politician or even on a journalist are very different. If Peter Gleick had been a journalist, maybe he would be now a kind of a hero that was able to pluck secret documents from HI - a sort of Woodward in the case of Watergate. But Gleick happens to be a scientist, who acted rather like a journalist or a lobbyist. In the eyes of public opinion he cannot be trusted any more, because it has become clear that he has an agenda, and that he is able to cross some lines, which society considers to be red lines for a scientist, defending that agenda.

Georg 132I recommend you read Fred Pearce on this (unless you dismiss him as a sceptic, too). He mentions various possibilities of how the emails could have been obtained without hacking. He even mentions the possibility that a CRU staff member may have left them unprotected on a server. There was an earlier episode where Phil Jones himself had left data accessible to outsiders, inadvertently.

Be that as it may, the damage in both cases is on one side mainly. The surprise caused by CRU mails was incomparably bigger than the HI documents. Plus there is a culprit in one case but not the other. Worse still, the culprit was chairing the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics.

EduardoI agree with much of what you say. However, I don't think journalists would accept that Gleick's trick should be part of their practices. As Megan McArdle put it,

"Let's walk through the thought process:

You receive an anonymous memo in the mail purporting to be the secret climate strategy of the Heartland Institute. It is not printed on Heartland Institute letterhead, has no information identifying the supposed author or audience, contains weird locutions more typical of Heartland's opponents than of climate skeptics, and appears to have been written in a somewhat slapdash fashion. Do you:

A. Throw it in the trash

B. Reach out to like-minded friends to see how you might go about confirming its provenance

C. Tell no one, but risk a wire-fraud conviction, the destruction of your career, and a serious PR blow to your movement by impersonating a Heartland board member in order to obtain confidential documents.

As a journalist, I am in fact the semi-frequent recipient of documents promising amazing scoops, and depending on the circumstances, my answer is always "A" or "B", never "C"."

Well, given that many of us expect that Gleick will eventually be revealed as the forger of the strategy memo, it's hard to see him ending up being compared to Woodward and Bernstein. More likely Dan Rather and the Killian documents. He hasn't finished doing damage to his movement, he just stopped in the middle.

Anthony Watts claims the moral high ground (and he seems to have a point):He says he had "full and open access in Dr. Phil Jones Journal of Physical Research (JGR) author account, which showed all of his papers (including some not published yet) plus comments from reviewers" --but did not distribute the information. Instead, he informed Phil Jones and JGR so they could close the security loop.

I think this is an interesting comparison to those who like to defend Gleick on ethical grounds. Take George Monbiot for example, who says Gleick did the right thing and should not have apologized. According to Monbiot climate scientists are in a war and need to defend themselves... Listen here (15mins) to a short BBC debate between him and Richard Klein.

MikeR #118 :How do reason and facts and science stand a chance in this political argument funded by hundreds of millions of fossil fuel dollars." Did you read the documents, or the story on them? Heartland's budget is a few million dollars total. Even less of that is for climate change issues.

Mike, Heartland is just one of a few hundred (if not a few thousand) tax-exempt 501(c)(3) "charity" organizations pushing the libertarian political agenda, which includes removing any environmental regulations. Regarding climate change, at the very minimum there are the 48 501(3)(c) organisations that John Mashey identified that are actively making political statements radically contrary to scientific findings, with a revenue total of some $330 million per year.

That is probably a big under-estimate of the amount of money going around, considering that many of these 48 organizations do not report their revenue (such as Monckton's SPPI).

Also, that does not include the wide spectrum of other influences, like the legal firms (of course, also 501(c)(3)) that are filing lawsuits against the EPA and government scientists, nor the influence of libertarians within the various Departments of the US, who, for example, can send criminal investigators to interrogate a scientist who simply published a peer-reviewed paper.

Neither does it quantify the amazing wide-open channel to become an 'expert' to testify in front of Congress if you have anything 'scientific' (no matter how wrong or twisted) to say against mainstream climate scientists. Soon and Baliunas, Monckton, Happer etc etc. all can testify to that (if they ever would).

I'm sure there will be more to come. I recall that was re-writing the K-12 climate change curriculum for the Heartland is employed by the Department of Energy.

Not to mention the violation of Heartland's 501(c)(3) "charity" status now that their political actions became apparent.

Any who is financing this mockery ? The Anonymous Donor provides 50 % of their entire budget, and gets to pick and choose the 'projects' he funds. Interesting that these were all 'Global Warming' projects, but he was not interested in funding Heartland's natural gas 'fracking' poject. So this wealthy individual with libertarian background is in coal or oil. Anyone want to guess ?

You are quite correct that I made a mistake about the Roy Spencer diff. The edit summary suggested the opposite and I then read the diff backwards. Sorry about that.

If you want the best example you might consider Lawrence Solomon's article "Who am I?".http://ep.probeinternational.org/2010/02/13/who-am-i/

The article is a pretty fair of what happened as William Connolley and his supporters sought for several years to hide from the reader that Lawrence Solomon is a well-known Canadian environmentalist.

You can refer to the extraordinary discussions that occurred in the archived discussion page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lawrence_Solomon/Archive_1

So when I hear from William Connolley, as I did the other day, that Peter Gleick is "a complete and utter twat of the highest order", as if he did something exceptionally unethical, I am afraid the irony is too much to bear.

People should not forget that Peter Gleick is just doing what so many others are doing, and most of those role models are doing it without any criticism. As I say, William Connolley is not the only one. I saw some extraordinary behaviour from other various professors inside Wikipedia.

Monbiot:"I see Peter Gleick, the man who obtained and leaked the devastating documents from the Heartland Institute, as a democratic hero. I do not think he should have apologised, nor do I believe that his job should be threatened. He has done something of benefit to society."Guardian online 24 Feb

He has a Marxist (?) picture of society that classes defend their interests, and the classes that concern him are the rich and the multi-national corporations. He would regard growing wealth inequalities as evidence that they are winning, for example, and describes a kleptocracy in action.

He is VERY pro disclosure, huge supporter of Freedom of Information, attacked CRU hard on these grounds.

He suspects that think-tanks and lobbying organisations, charities too, often exist in considerable part to further interests, and believes they should by law disclose their funding (whether left or right).

He's emotional and given to hyperbole, and would himself NEVER do anything like Gleick did. I suspect he's (wrongly) shoe-horning Gleick into some civil disobedience hero role.

Climate Audit have posted correspondence in which Gleick refuses the HI invitation to speak. It's perfectly civil, and he declines on the grounds that they don't disclose their funding (which they don't have to, of course).

Monbiot would believe that everyone should take that principled position, and so would admire Gleick for that stance.

I can't find new arguments in your post besides formal objections and belabouring on single words and figures.

Instead of "erasing" (the evidence of a worldwide MWP) one might call it attempting to discredit or to bringing into derision all other than the author's narrow view on the issue.

As the Wiki arbitrators say it in their general judgments ...

"WMC has shown an unreasonable degree of Ownership over climate-related articles and unwillingness to work in a consensus environment"

"it's clear that WMC is behaving in a way consistent with someone who feels he protects the articles against a specific point of view"

"WMC has focused a substantial portion of his editing in the Climate change topic area on biographical articles about living persons who hold views opposed to his own with respect to the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming, in a fashion suggesting that he does not always approach such articles with an appropriately neutral and disinterested point of view"

WMC was a member of RealClimate and he did edit entries in Wikipedia on climate and climate change.

This is not forbidden - but and like climategate and the Heartland case do - it is shedding a light on what's going on behind the curtains oft the global warming theatre we are witnessing.

To move forward: the interesting question is what does it all mean for science and communication, what are the impacts?

@Rob Dekker 144: So if I understand you right, this billions of dollars anti-climate conspiracy includes every conservative or libertarian organization in the United States. In that case, I'm not surprised that you got such a high number. I'd also suggest that no one take such a suggestion seriously. Something like a half of Americans are conservative or libertarian, after all. We are not all a big conspiracy backed by oil money. That's just our general attitude towards politics and economics.

Judith Curry: Why Target Heartland?http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/24/why-target-heartland/#more-7356 It seems to me that this goes to the heart of the post I just made: Gleick apparently believed that Heartland is an important part of this incredible massive billion-dollar conspiracy. Yet the documents show that their funding for climate issues is essentially trivial, and was cut considerably because they lost funding from one single anonymous donor. Doesn't this in itself show that the whole narrative of the massive conspiracy isn't true? The most important organization Gleick could find is really pretty tiny and inconsequential.

RoddyDisclosure of funding is a noble principle and a good idea but neglects the much bigger problem of gaining access to public communication.Suppose we know where every penny comes from and who the recipients are. What now? Does a specific income stream invalidate an argument? Should only people have a right to public appearance who are destitute?

I can see the class war logic transposed onto what Monbiot calls the climate war: he would like to see all claims makers (or warriors) colour coded so we can distinguish the good from the bad. And the income stream is the marker.

Besides, Monbiot does not applaud Gleick's refusal to appear at the HI event but his trickery.

Reiner I agree with all of that, I was just adding context to Monbiot, who is an environmentalist I happen to admire, mainly because he doesn't die in the trenches for a lost argument; as examples he's anti UK solar power subsidies, anti biofuels, pro-nuclear - he tries to be pragmatic. So I listen to him.

And part of his pragmatism is the practical belief that people, groups, classes, are often essentially self-interested, so better to know their interests when debating than not. I agree you then get the 'playing the man not the ball' problem.

Alex, your link to solomon proves that Lawrence Solomon thinks he is a notable environmentalist. If I think I am the one and only truth, will you make sure it is added to my Wikipedia entry when it ever is made?

Your link to the Talk page is another "see!", without indicating what there is to see. You do suddenly change your smear to "William Connolley and supporters". The big evil Connolley has a following!

You also failed to provide any evidence that Connolley made the Idso-entries with the specific aim to add the "smears" of exxonsecrets. Again your link proved you wrong, and you still do not provide evidence that exxonsecrets contains "smears".

Bam, I appreciate that you got Belette to participate in this debate here. That is useful.

Bam, you address Alex directly using rather rough wording. Therefore, I may also address you in this frank way: What I find difficult to understand is why you, as well as Belette, seem to hardly have doubts when you present assertions. When you post, everything is clear, with people either good or bad people, Bush-like clear.

Actually, when thinking about the broad field, Belette seemingly was editing (Some seem to say as an "Owner"), a field with many elements contested - he seemed to have known what is right and what is wrong. Likely, he had some advisors, while others were considered unqualified. How did he know, who was right and who was unqualified?

This reminds me on Vahrenholt, the skeptic we discussed earlier. He also has no doubts, he knows, he knows better. Just like you and Belette. In many cases, alarmists and skeptics are the same in thinking, in methods, in being "right". They think that solving the scientific questions would solve the question of "right" policies.

V. Lenzer, "single words" are rather important. You yourself already weaken your claim that Connolley erased the MWP. That Connolley tried to discredit any information on the MWP, only following his narrow viewpoint, is a complete and utter crock. Connolley added information directly from the IPCC report, which is and was consistent with the science at that time. that "narrow viewpoint" thus points to the majority of paleoclimatologists!

The edit-warring on Wikipedia are well known, and have repeatedly let to people being banned, blocked, censored, and whatnot, just because they, as Connolley once said himself, "do not suffer fools gladly".

What all this shows for science and communication is that some people have a problem with the outcome of the science, and thus need to create as much FUD as possible. Not all scientists take such unwarranted FUD lightly, which is then gladly used by those who don't like the outcome of the science by pointing to the scientist and say "look how nasty he is, ergo...".

I think a little imagination - and my own experience - will make it obvious what it would be like on wikipedia if there's a group of sneering people determined to shape a subject to suit themselves. It can certainly cause someone to drop the idea of writing there. This is true whether or not what he wants to write is correct. In my case it happens I was correct and they were wrong (I think), but it doesn't matter. Bam's friends know they are right; it's irrelevant whether they actually are. They could just as easily be a team from the Heartland Institute. The point is, they control the page. And wikipedia doesn't like that, because it breaks what makes it wikipedia work.

MikeR @Rob Dekker 144: So if I understand you right, this billions of dollars anti-climate conspiracy includes every conservative or libertarian organization in the United States.

No, Mike, you did not understand me right. In fact, all of the statements you made ("billions of dollars", "anti-climate conspiracy" and "every conservative or libertarian organization in the United States") were from you, and not from me.

Your response is called setting "strawman" arguments, and as you very well (should) know, is a logical fallacy. In other words, they do NOT add anything to the conversation, and in fact are typically set by people who have no facts to back up their argument, or have no argument at all.

So, if you have something constructive to add to the conversation, then please try again, this time without strawmans.

Well, I reject this. There is no evidence outside the faked memo, that I am aware of, that any folk from Heartland have behaved in a manner comparable to that of some alarmists. In fact, it is not clear to me that they have done anything that should be regarded as "unethical" at all, although I may change my mind on this point.

As far as I can see, the worst allegations that have emerged against Heartland themselves are the "K-12 curriculum" issue and small salaries paid to a small number of skeptics to produce the NIPCC report. In the case of Craig Idso, it might be argued that it's not a small salary; okay.

I do not see how either of these allegations compares with what we have seen from the other side.

* On K-12 curriculum, does anyone deny that alarmists have also attempted to influence the curriculum in high schools in a way consistent with their beliefs? Does anyone deny that alarmists have attempted to scare children for the sake of implementation of their preferred policy? Is that morally okay? Do we all recall the 10:10 "no pressure" video with little children being blown up if they don't agree with climate change?

Go to google now, and type in "teaching children about climate change". One document I found is http://hdgc.epp.cmu.edu/teachersguide/teachersguide.htm

In point #1 we see iconic Mann / IPCC TAR hockey stick, with a perflectly flat blade follow the curve of CO2 emissions. The LIA and MWP have indeed been erased. There is no mention that the warming caused up to about 1960 is thought to be primarily caused naturally.

Later the question is asked about why there is a controversy. Children in this course are told the only reason there is a controversy is that some poor communication and funding by the shadowy special interest groups.

Now did Heartland hope to correct some of this bias and replace with something more accurate? Or did they plan to teach that climate change is a hoax? I suspect, more likely, the former. Even if they believe that climate change is a hoax (and some of them presumably do), they would be stupid if they think they could have a school curriculum changed to say this. So, it seems more likely to me that they simply want to remove from the curriculum an inaccurate alarmist bias. If I am right about this, then is this in any way unethical? And if they do want to change the curriculum to teach that climate change is a hoax, then that would be a bit whacky, but then is it any worse than creationists wanting to teach creationism? It's not "unethical", although I guess it creates a problem for society. Because, they believe what they believe, presumably, in good faith.

* On the salaries paid to Craig Idso, Fred Singer and the Australian Bob Carter (and tiny amounts paid to a few others), what to make of this? Craig Idso said that his funding is already declared inside the NIPCC report (I haven't checked but assume he is telling the truth). The question then becomes, do these scientists, through their funding, have a conflict of interest? I say, probably. Is a conflict of interest unethical? Not necessarily. (And if it is, it hardly even compares to the sort of conflict of interest in using Wikipedia to write the biographies of your personal enemies.) And how does this compare with recent discoveries of similar conflicts of interest within the IPCC? (e.g. scientists simultaneously working for Greenpeace, hydro energy companies, and so on). It appears to be far less dishonest than in the case of the IPCC. Everyone already knows that NIPCC is a skeptic organisation, it concedes this plainly, and it was not a secret that it received some funding from interest groups. As to exactly who gets what, that might be a bit unclear. But without the independent investigation of people like Steve McIntyre we would never have known about the extent to which these advocacy organisations had infiltrated the IPCC.

Let's also compare how skeptics behave in Wikipedia. Bam above brought up the editor Lumidek, who I happen to know is in real life the Czech physicist and arch-climate change skeptic Luboš Motl.

In one way, Luboš has one thing in common with William Connolley: he runs a blog where he regularly attacks the people that he disagrees with. His writing is over the top, although I think most people know he's not entirely serious.

So let's have a look at what Luboš Motl has been doing in Wikipedia.

His contributions begin here, around the same time as William Connolley.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&target=Lumidek

Evidently, Luboš's primary motivation for joining the Wikipedia community has been to teach theoretical physics to the people of the world, and other subjects.

He has occasionally ventured into the climate change area, and has politely expressed unorthodox opinions, e.g.http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=3715875

Let's look at this first clash with William Connolley:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_warm_period&diff=prev&oldid=3979759http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_warm_period&diff=prev&oldid=3980317http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Medieval_warm_period&diff=prev&oldid=3983724http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=3983589

Who is biased there? It appears to me that Luboš was far more interested in neutrality, and willing to compromise, than Connolley and his supporters ever were.

And I challenge anyone to show me a professional skeptic scientist who has ever invaded Wikipedia for the purpose of taking over a page with their own bias. Only one side does that.

Alex,You make a lot of good points, and I understand that this debate raging in the blogoshoere can be extremely confusing, from both sides, I would say.

I have experience with both Motl and with Connolley. For starters, after the Lindzen and Choi 2009 paper was hyped on Fox News as "the end of the AGW scam", Motl backed me up when I pointed out the blatant mistake of counting the Boltzmann radiation as a 'negative' climate feedback. http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/spencer-on-lindzen-choi.html

This finding actually led to a disagreement between Spencer and Lindzen, and Lindzen admitted his mistakes after Trenberth pointed them out in Trenberth et al 2010.So much for "the end of the AGW scam"...

But Motl is a two-edged sword, since he easily resorts to ad-hominems when you point out the inconsistencies in his arguments. See the comment section in this post, where he calls Arctic sea ice decline "breathtakingly idiotic propagandistic proclamations ", calling names and claiming that I hold a "obsessive religion - which is as hostile and dangerous as the radical Islamism".

Regarding Connolley, anyone who thinks that he is a 'warmist', please let them talk to me. I have a $10,000 sea ice bet with him, where I come out as the 'warmist' and the 'alarmist'.

I think between all the accusations against the IPCC and the political rethoric from bloggers, and the far-out propaganda from the libertarian think tanks, and all the thousands of blog posts and millions of comments are really just confusing the issue.

The only way, at least as I see it, to figure out what is true, and what is nonsense, is to discuss scientific findings themselves.

So the question for everyone is : If you do not agree with the overall IPCC summary of some 18,000 scientific papers, then which scientific papers, ragardless of where they are published, or if they were even peer-reviewed, did you find most convincing to form an opinion opposing the IPCC conclusions ?

All native English speakers - please use plain English language, not American slang - quite a few here on the Klimazwiebel are not native English speakers. I personally found some terms - e.g., twaddle - not in the vocabulary of my standard scientific English. What are "bullocks"?

William is British and 'twaddle' and 'bollocks' are British slang. Twaddle is 'Trivial or foolish speech or writing; nonsense'; the literal meaning of 'bollocks' isn't suitable for publication; colloquial it also means 'nonsense'. :) I used 'whacky' also spelt 'wacky' apparently and it means, "Funny or amusing in a slightly odd or peculiar way: 'a wacky chase movie'", although I intended 'slightly crazy'. I said 'over the top' which means 'goes too far'. I think British English contains far more slang than American. ;-)

Someone out there has the patience to give a short (chronological) summary what's debated here exactly? The issues at stake, the chronology of the debate, and what is at stake (or how they slowly drift from here to there)?

I would highly appreciate that (and no risk involved - klimazwiebel honors good intentions!).

For the last I can give a quite short summary:WC based his work at Wikipedia on mainstream science. One party seems to see therein a scandal, a kind of "gatekeeping". The other party thinks, that's exactly what everyone is supposed to do.

News about Gleick:

Yesterday Heartland released the email exchange, where PG impersonated a HI board member and phished some documents. Interesting development, because PG's phishing email didn't include information from the questioned strategy memo Gleick claims to have received before the documents.

Who am I to disagree with the IPCC? And who am I to disagree with Richard Lindzen and others?

You say there are 18,000 papers - I take it you haven't read all those papers yourself. And do you know how many papers formed the complete set of published papers that 18,000 were selected from? I wouldn't know whether 18,000 is a lot or a few.

I have read the WG1 AR4 report and more recently I have read the zero order drafts of the WG1 AR5 report. As I understand the arguments better, I find that the report gives an impression that the attribution argument is stronger than it really is. It does this by presenting true facts in a way that sometimes mislead the reader. I don't mean to suggest the intention is to mislead, but certainly, I found some of it misleading, when I understood it better.

One simple example is the use of the word 'anthropogenic'. The word is used in a variety of senses. It can be used as a paraphrase of 'anthropogenic global warming' - i.e. Co2 caused warming. But then, the same word is used to describe human aerosol emissions. 'Anthropogenic influence' may mean cooling in the stratosphere and even then it may mean either cooling caused by Co2 increases or cooling caused by ozone depleting substances. Even 'anthropogenic warming' might mean either warming caused by Co2 or warming caused by black carbon aerosols. Thus many lines of evidence are assembled showing an 'anthropogenic influence'. Throughout, this creates an impression - and I am sure even some scientists outside their area of expertise would be confused by this - that these piles of evidence show that atmospheric Co2 is causing the surface warming. And importantly, the fact that some of these lines of evidence - e.g. the stratospheric cooling - do not tell us anything about how much of the warming at the surface is being caused by Co2 is not anywhere explained to the reader.

Accordingly, I would love to read an IPCC report where the argument implicating Co2 influence is given in its raw form, unvarnished.

So asking about papers that the IPCC did or didn't ignore may be beside the point a bit.

Coming back to what I said, I am not qualified to have an opinion one way or the other. So like nearly everyone, it is vitally important that I can trust the scientists writing the reports.

I will have a go at resolving the confusion of this bifurcating thread. Note I can't read German so I don't know what is written in German.

The thread was of course about Dr. Gleick's deception until in #38 V. Lenzer mentioned other examples of "cheating and lying in the name of a 'noble cause'".

One of V. Lenzer's examples was William Connolley's activities in Wikipedia. Hans said he did not know anything about this, and a few of us provided further details from divergent perspectives.

In #69, posting as 'Belette', William Connolley himself appeared to tell his side of the story. Another editor 'Bam' seems to be a friend of William's, and has defended William's actions.

Opinions range from Bam on one end of the spectrum, who regards William as righteous and largely blameless. Most people, it is said, simply fail to understand how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Bam accuses Solomon of making it all up, and me of misrepresenting the situation.

At the other end of the spectrum is probably me, believing that what goes on inside Wikipedia, done constantly and without apology by a quite large group of anonymous activists, and mostly without even criticism, is much worse than this incident which may have been just a single lapse by a scientist who subsequently at least admitted it was wrong and foolish.

Coming back to question if Gleick acted ethically, here is a comment from today's Chicago Tribune:

"Gleick may have thought he could undercut Heartland and thereby advance the case for global warming. Instead, he fueled doubts about which side is right in this long-running debate.

That's a shame. Science relies on multiple layers of honesty. They include the honorably conducted gathering and analysis of facts, a perpetual quest for irrefutable evidence supporting conclusions — and trust that everyone is acting with integrity.

When scientific truth becomes sufficiently compelling, it matters little what the critics or skeptics say. It doesn't matter if everyone doesn't believe. Doubters cannot make the Earth flat.

But stunts such as Gleick's — this effort to sully opponents with dishonest tactics — undercuts scientists around the world as they marshal evidence to convince an increasingly skeptical public about the dangers of global warming."

"With virtually no effort on my part (beyond reading an email, cutting and pasting into the blog post), I have uncovered “juicier stuff” about Heartland than anything Gleick uncovered. Okay, maybe the HI are actually the baddest guys in town from the perspective of the alarmists. The irony of Gleick committing professional seppuku over getting information about stuff that is either generally known or suspected or regarded as no big deal. When all he had to do was ask Joseph Bast some questions, and he would have told him all sorts of things (just not the names of the donors, which aren’t all that interesting anyways.)

This comment is in response to Alex Harvey response to Rob Dekker, currently numbered 169.

Alex, I think you confuse with your musings on the term anthropogenic. Online dictionaries simply define "anthropogenic" as "caused by humans".

So the Anthropogenic in AGW stands for that part of observed warming caused by humans.

In fact, the discussion has been confused by the persistent use of the term AGW to represent the potentially catastrophic warming caused by human emissions of CO2, but not other human causes.

Actually, the term AGW properly applied would include all of the land-use impacts on local and regional climate. But it doesn't. And it is very likely that these land-use impacts (refer to Roger Pielke Sr) outweigh the warming coming from anthropogenic CO2. And in any case, cannot be separated. Which suggests just how complex the issue is.

@Rob Dekker (#160)"No, Mike, you did not understand me right. In fact, all of the statements you made ("billions of dollars", "anti-climate conspiracy" and "every conservative or libertarian organization in the United States") were from you, and not from me."Of course they were from me. I didn't claim you said them, I claimed that that was what you were saying. It seems to me that you were presenting a link with a whole lot of organizations that are not really focused on climate, but are simply liberatarian or conservative. Given their bent, many of them may take an anti-AGW position, and may even sometimes do something about that position. That is all understandable, and in America at least those are fairly popular positions. Not a majority, I think, but not far short.

All of that is a far cry from your web of organizations with "hundreds of millions of fossil fuel dollars." I see no evidence for any web, any real connection between these organizations aside from their general agreement politically [and except for a chart where people drew some lines connecting them], any hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to this cause, or any particular fossil fuel connection. That, I think, is the same imaginary conspiracy theory that probably sent Peter Gleick off on his quest against Heartland.

The truth is so much simpler than that. The United States is still a pretty conservative place, at least half of it. That means it is pretty suspicious of scientific theories that push in the direction of things like massive carbon taxes. Any advocate of that has quite a uphill battle to fight. They are also pretty quick to believe the worst of people like Peter Gleick who step out of line, since they start off not liking what he has to say. No conspiracy is needed.

I am well aware of what the word means, but in a theory called "anthropogenic global warming", where we all understand "anthropogenic" as a paraphrase for "caused by greenhouse gases", one would think some care would be taken to distinguish usage of "anthropogenic" in the ordinary sense from this more specific sense.

I am also aware of Roger Pielke Sr's views, although it seems that most regard the albedo forcing from land use changes as very minor compared to the radiative forcing from CO2 and the water vapour and cloud feedbacks.

But look, if the IPCC wants to talk about -all- anthropogenic effects, why stop with changes that affect aspects of temperature and precipitation? We could talk about anthropogenic effects on koala populations in my state of New South Wales. We could talk about pollution in our water.

Clearly, the intent of the detection and attribution chapter is to attribute the cause of global warming - not to talk about observations of human-caused changes in the environment in general. So I find it strange that so many words are devoted to observations of 'anthropogenic influence' - e.g. stratospheric cooling - that do not help to explain what has caused the warming at the surface (or in the oceans for that matter).

Alex Harvey. Re your #178. When you say "caused by greenhouse gases" are you including water vapor? I thought not. But water vapor is a greenhouse gas, is it not?

And also, your characterisation of RPSr's views on land-use as being limited to albedo forcing from land-use changes is not actually fair. Spend some time at RPSr's site and you will see that he includes in land-use effects a whole panopaly including deforestation, urbanisation, industrial monoculture agriculture, draining of swamps, and a whole lot of other practices that modify local and regional climate. Think US Dust Bowl of the 1930s, desertification in various places eg Gobi desert encroaching on Beijing, Ural Sea etc etc.

On the other hand, I probably agree with your other points.

Except, I don't think we really know what caused the observed warming up until 1998. Clearly natural factors are at play, as are land use factors (at least on a local and regional basis) and how much is really due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions??

Well, the IPCC regards changes in water vapour (and perhaps more controversially, clouds too) as 'feedbacks' rather than 'forcings'. So 'anthropogenic global warming' is supposed to mean 'surface warming caused by the radiative effect of man-made emissions of CO2, and to a lesser extent CH4, N2O and various CFCs'.

On Pielke, I am aware of Pielke's views (I actually am very interested in Pielke's writings). I don't mean to say I think he is wrong, but clearly the IPCC folk don't take him seriously. So it is beside the point to say that Pielke might be right or to point to other possible causes of warming.

If your statement is correct that the "liberatarian or conservative" who "Given their bent, many of them may take an anti-AGW position" and if they are "Not a majority, I think, but not far short", then by blunt statistics, one may assume that there may be some 700,000 501(c)'s that take "the anti-AGW position", and thus you may be right that there are "billions" of dollars supporting that opinion.

With so much money behind 'libertarian' opinion and news media influence, I am still wondering how the scientific facts summarized by the IPCC, with an annual budget of some $ 10 million can possibly make any difference for public opinion.

Now that Indur Goklany, Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Interior will be questioned in a House Committee hearing for being payed to write for the Heartland Institute, what are we going to do about the guy who the Heartland planned to pay to write scientific misinformation and outright false statement in the K-12 curriculum ?

This would not be the first time the Heartland (again, payed by the Anonymous Donor) tries to push scientific mis-information into the educational system.

One of the best known Heartland incursions into the schoolyard occurred in 2008, when the institute mailed teaching materials to 11,250 schools in Canada. In 2009, Science derided Heartland for sending copies of "The Skeptic’s Handbook" to 14,000 US school board officials. Heartland's "Environment and Climate New" mocked one school board president for his refusal to use it.

The question is, how much longer will the we allow industrial propaganda, unsustained by scientific findings, to be tought to our children ?

Sorry what is the budget of the NIPCC? I didn't add up the numbers. Are you saying it's greater than $10 million per year? But of course, you didn't include all the funding of the actual research that the IPCC reviews. So in fact, the money invested into those promoting action on climate change and research sympathetic to the consensus position is indeed in the order of billions, right? Whereas those researching things contrary to the IPCC, e.g. the Svensmark predicament, find they can't get funding at all to do their research.

So can you honestly, with your hand on your heart, tell me you see skeptics getting more funding than the rest of scientists?

Do you believe that skeptics should be completely starved of funding to stop them publishing any research at all? Is it true that what you really want is for them to be completely silenced?

I'm not worried about Heartland's plans for K12-curriculum any more. So let Dr. Woijeck do his work on modules (I wonder if he will ever start), the important difference is, that people will know it's a Heartland product. So schools and teachers are able to make their own rational decisions.

Is Heartland a "big player" or do we overestimate its influence? Revkin posted an interesting cartoon:http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/the-other-false-balance-in-the-climate-fight/

We are witnessing the end of the „occupy climate science“ movement. It has lost the PR-battle and Gleick knew that well when he planned his act of desperation.

It’s neither the conservative political opponents nor „big oil“ who have beaten the green activists in the fight for public trust, they did it themselves by exaggerating the catastrophe scenarios and overdoing the cause.

But – and beyond the public controversy on climate issues and longtime before Kopenhagen and Climategate - an allergic reaction could be observed in the academic milieus.

It started in the fields of paleoclimatology and climate history where at last some scientists held up a defensive line against the IPCC’s consensus train. They have been discredited in almost every sense of the word, often enough not by arguments but by ad hominem attacks.

Again and despite some clear warnings this was another symptom of overdoing the case.At this point many other scientists started to rethink their positions.

Today science seems to be on the road to recovery. A majority of climate scientists admits that there are uncertainties, that consensus is a myth and that a lot of research needs to be done for a better understanding of the climate system.

This recovery, sort of a self-healing process, is widely ignored by the media and the public opinion – but it’s real and neither the Heartland Institute, Peter Gleick, the IPCC, Al Gore or who ever are going to stop it.

@Rob Dekker. Rob, you do understand that the other half of the United States is liberal? And are just as likely to support carbon taxes and pro-AGW teaching in schools and so forth, as the Heartland types are to oppose them? And are just as likely to get support from George Soros as Heartland is to get from the Kochs (which they apparently don't, at least for climate issues)?

But again, all of this is just conspiracy theories. Most of those charity organizations have nothing whatever to do with climate issues. Most non-profits are doing other things. If they are into politics, climate may be at the very bottom of their agendas if at all. It makes no sense to add up their total assets and then start talking about hundreds of millions or zillions of dollars in a massive PR campaign to defeat the IPCC.

"If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Gleick's view of politics may not have much to do with mine.

MikeR : Rob, you do understand that the other half of the United States is liberal? And are just as likely to support carbon taxes and pro-AGW teaching in schools and so forth, as the Heartland types are to oppose them?

Liberals and conservatives have different opinions on many issues, including AGW, and that is fine. That's what politics is about.

But science is not a democracy.

What makes the Heartland types different from other 'educational and reseach' institutions is that they deliberatly and consistently use and create verifiably false or misleading or cherry-picked scientific information, and present that as 'science' into the political debate, the media, and also into the classroom.

In short, they are a tax-exempt PR firm that you can hire to spread lies that sustain your industrial interests.

Yes Hans, I read your definition for 'lying' and 'lies', and in this case, I think that is verifiably an accurate description of many of the Heartland's statements.

I don't know of ANY liberal (let alone a 'research and educational') organization that even comes close to the Heartlands disrespect for science and factual information (and even actively engages in intimidation against scientists and those opposing their mis-information). Please let me know if you know one.

And they are not the only ones. Mashey counted 48 501(c)(3)s spread the most effective mis-information on climate change to please their (anonymous) clients. At that is at least $ 330 million annually.

Free market mechanisms are good in increasing effectiveness and efficiency in providing any product, including selling lies, mis-information and 'doubt'.

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